pervert enthusiast

somewhere between the third kiss and the fourth, the clumsiness burns off, he learns quickly, lets himself feel, and what's underneath comes up through it, and suddenly he's kissing you like he's dying.

hand fisted in your coat, backing you into whatever's behind you, mouth open and hungry and completely unselfconscious for the first time since you met him. no technique. all appetite. and you realise, with your back against a wall and this quiet boy licking into your mouth like he's been holding his breath his whole life, he's starved. genuinely starved.

nobody has ever touched him. nobody has ever wanted him. and the instinct in him to TAKE was always there, it just needed someone patient enough to look past the awkwardness and the flinching and the discomfort with touch until he stopped being uncomfortable.

and you were patient. in a way only a wolf ever could be.

and then he can't get enough. once the door's open he wants you constantly (not in a demanding way, he'd never demand) but in the way he starts reaching for you first. finding your hand. pulling you back for one more kiss in doorways, lingering with his hands at your cheeks. touching your waist when you're standing at the counter. this boy who couldn't handle contact three months ago now can't stop.

and above all else, he loves that you're possessive of him.

because nobody has ever wanted him enough to be. you put your hand on the back of his neck when someone's talking to him too long, and you feel him go still under your palm and then lean into it. you call him yours in front of people and his ears go red. he doesn't correct you, ever, and later, in bed, he's rougher for it, more desperate to remind you he is.

he's so starved that the leash isn't a burden to him, it's the first proof he's ever had of being valuable, and he laps it up.

and then he pleads for more AND takes more, sometimes in the same breath, and the combination is genuinely dizzying. begging you with his mouth against your throat, and then pinning your wrists a minute later and taking what he asked for anyway because your answer didn't come fast enough. it makes you want to give him everything. and you do. you're insanely greedy with him.

you, who has never wanted to be anyone's, want to be his so badly it frightens you a little.

because Brendan who flushes scarlet when you push him against a wall in public and claim his mouth is not the same man who holds you by the throat, unblinking, and fucks you into the mattress. same person. same night, sometimes. flustered at 6pm and ruining you at midnight.

his devotion and loyalty to you easily rivals valarr's, but valarr would never do what Brendan does, which is: flip you over mid-fuck and take what he wants. just his hand between your shoulder blades and your face in the mattress, and his voice at your ear whispering filth in that same quiet murmur he uses to order coffee.

there's a domination instinct in him that you did not put there. you opened a door, made him comfortable with wanting. you did not build the room on the other side.

and it DELIGHTS you. because for the first time in your life you're not holding the leash and you don't have to. you taught him what to do and now he's doing things you didn't teach him, and the whiplash (the boy who blushes when you kiss him in public pushing your head down until his cock hits the back of your throat and rasping about how beautiful you look like that, not letting you up once, not for a second) is the single hottest thing that has ever happened to you.

but the thing that actually gets under your skin is simpler.

the softness. because it never goes anywhere.

sometimes he wakes at 3am and you're not in the bed. and he finds you on the floor by the window, knees drawn up, watching the city breathe below. you do this. you've always done this. the nights where the weight of the name and the empire and the version of yourself you have to be tomorrow gets too heavy to lie down under.

he doesn't ask what's wrong. doesn't turn the light on. he just sits down behind you, one leg on either side, and pulls you back into his chest.

and the snarl builds in you. it always builds. every instinct you have says get off, I don't need this, I'm fine, I have never once needed to be coddled. your whole body goes rigid with it. the wolf coming up through the skin, snarling.

he doesn't push. he never pushes. his arms stay loose enough that you could break away in a second if you wanted. his cheek comes to rest against your hair. his nose traces the line of your throat, slow, no pressure behind it, just contact. just presence. and you feel it in the slight tremor running through him, barely there, the shake in his hands where they're linked over your stomach.

because he needs you to be okay. needs it so badly it's coming out of him physically.

and against your will (genuinely against it, past the itching discomfort, past every wall you've spent your entire life reinforcing) you melt. your spine gives. you sink back into him and let your head drop against his shoulder, and let him hold you, and he exhales into your hair like he's been waiting hours for permission.

neither of you says anything. you watch the city together until it starts getting light.

he does this constantly, in smaller ways. brings you tea before you know you want it. notices you're tired before you do. sits with you in silence and never needs it filled. and your hackles go down. every time. despite yourself.

quiet. so quiet. lips moving against your skin.

"you're so warm."

said like a discovery. said with something in it that isn't quite affection, or is, but the wrong flavour of it. like warmth is a fact about you he's just now learning and finding remarkable. his nose drags up the back of your neck into your hairline. inhales deeply.

"you're so warm."

again. exactly the same. exactly the same cadence, same fond... hunger.

his arm tightens. his hand finds yours in the dark and threads his fingers through. they're cool too and slightly too long but you're too far gone to do the math on that.

"I've missed you."

and god, you've missed this so much your chest aches with it. you turn your face into the pillow and squeeze his hand and feel him settle in behind you, chest to your back, knees behind your knees, mouth at your neck.

the thing at the base of your skull is screaming now.

you don't listen.

you only press closer.

so he tries to approach, and you snarl at him.

full-body, frequency-shaking, the-walls-leaning-away-from-you snarl. your human shape cracks at the edges and he catches a glimpse of what's underneath, and his form stutters because you are powerful. young and clumsy, still learning but powerful, growing stronger by the day in a way that shouldn't be possible for a newborn. the force rolling off you makes his skin prickle in ways he didn't know he could prickle.

"stay away from me."

your voice is layered in harmonics that say i will rip you apart if you take another step, and he believes you might try. he takes another step anyway because he's an ancient idiot, and also because the threat is doing things to him he doesn't have vocabulary for.

you vanish. slip between levels with that clumsy new grace you're developing. half liquid, half stumble. gone before he can blink.

he stands in the empty corridor vibrating with adrenaline and arousal and annoyance in equal measure.

his body is doing a thing it's never done. not for the hounds, not for the facelings, not for any of the entities he has encountered over millennia, including the ones he could, technically, mate with. he's existed alongside other entities for eons and felt nothing. no pull. no heat. no interest in their forms or their frequencies. they were features of the landscape. irrelevant.

you snarled at him and his whole body lit up.

this is a problem.

so he chases you. as predators do. across levels, through corridors, between the cracks in the walls. you're infuriatingly good at evading him. better every time, your control of the exits improving daily, your ability to mask your scent trail developing at a rate that drives him genuinely insane.

and sometimes (this is the part that makes him want to tear wallpaper off the ceiling) you play.

you let him get close. close enough that he can taste your frequency in the air, that electric sweetness that's become a fixation. close enough that he thinks this time, this time i'll catch her. and then you twist away at the last second and the burst of speed is just a fraction faster than necessary. not evasion. performance. a taunt.

you look over your shoulder and he swears, he swears, the corner of your mouth twitches before you disappear.

you're playing chase with him. and the playing is somehow worse than the evading because the evading was survival and the playing is choice. you're choosing to stay near. choosing to let him close. choosing to dance at the edge of his reach and dart away laughing in frequencies he feels in his marrow.

he's equal parts aroused and furious, and the two feelings have blurred into a single vibrating state he can't shake.

and you're killing things along the way. lesser entities that made the mistake of targeting wanderers in your territory. he watches you tear through them with brutal efficiency that's refining itself daily. the fawn finding its legs, the stumble turning into a sprint.

you're magnificent. you're getting more magnificent every week, and the growth curve is staggering. you fight with a ferocity that has no right to exist in a creature your age, defending humans that could never defend themselves. the contradiction of it (the violence and the gentleness living in the same body) makes him pace, itching with urge to—

he manages to catch you once. pins you against a wall with his full weight, true form pressing against yours, and the contact is electric.

your frequencies clash and tangle, the walls cracking around you. he holds you there, straining, using every advantage his age gives him, and demands answers. what are you. where did you come from. why do you protect them. why won't you TALK to him. he's been here for millennia. he's the first thing the walls ever made. the least you could do is have a conversation.

you scowl at him with flat, cold eyes. and then you twist. your form bends in a direction his can't follow, a trick you must have learned this week because you couldn't do that last time. and you're gone. sliding through his grip like mercury.

his hands are tingling where your skin touched his. your scent is all over him. sweet and electric, layered with that warm undertone that shouldn't exist in an entity, the note underneath the power that smells like... he doesn't know.

he doesn't have a reference point. he's never smelled anything like it. new, like you. dizzying and addictive. he buries his face in his own arm where your frequency lingers and breathes deep, greedy, rolling the scent through his senses until his form shudders with it. he wants to press his face against the source. against the crook of your neck. against the pulse point you built into that pretty human throat. he wants to taste the skin there. find out if the scent translates to flavour.

he roars. the whole of level 0 shakes. three levels away, you hear it. the corner of your mouth twitches.

fine. fine. if you're so fond of the little humans, he can adapt. he starts letting wanderers pass through level 0 unharmed. it goes against every instinct but he does it, because he's noticed that you follow them. you shadow wanderer groups through the backrooms and where they go, you go, and if he makes level 0 safe enough, maybe you'll follow them in.

it works. you trail a group through his corridors and he feels you cross the threshold, and his whole level sings. you're on his territory now. his home turf. every wall, every floor, every flickering light answering to him.

and this time he comes prepared.

he builds a human shape. studies the wanderers the way you study them, maps the features, constructs a face from the best pieces he can find. sandy-haired. blue-eyed. lean. angular jaw. crooked grin.

he puts on the suit and examines himself. rolls the shoulders. tests the smirk in a reflective surface. decides it's very good. if you're so fond of the human form, if you chose to wear one before you'd even finished learning to hold your own edges, then he'll meet you there.

he can play along. he can play along better.

he finds you on level 0 in a corridor that bends only for him. you're crouched beside a sleeping wanderer, adjusting a makeshift blanket over their shoulders with those careful hands.

you look up when his footsteps register and your whole body goes taut, ready to bolt, ready to fight. and then you see him, and surprise flickers across your human face, real and unguarded, because you were expecting the true form, the ancient vast thing that chases you through walls.

you were not expecting a boy with blue eyes and a crooked grin, leaning against the doorframe with his hands in his pockets, radiating the energy of a creature that has spent three millennia being the most dangerous thing around.

he tilts his head. the grin widens. the suit ripples at the edges, barely held, seams visible if you look too long. he doesn't care. he wears the imperfection openly.

"like it?" drawled. cocky. testing the shape of human arrogance on a borrowed tongue. his eyes raking over your human form with a slow, appreciative drag that he makes sure you catch. "built it just for you. figured if my pretty little territory invader is going to keep slipping through my fingers, the least I can do is look good while she does it."

your eyes narrow. your body is still coiled to run but there's a beat, one beat, where your gaze tracks from his face to his shoulders to the lean line of his waist.

he watches you look. lets you. shifts his weight against the doorframe so the borrowed muscles move under the borrowed shirt because he is ancient and powerful and also, apparently, not above peacocking for a newborn entity he's been chasing for months.

"it's sloppy," you conclude flatly. your human voice carrying undertones that strokes down his spine.

"it's my first try." he pushes off the wall. takes a step toward you. "i'll take notes." another step. his eyes dropping to your mouth. back up. "you know, for a creature who's been alive for five minutes, you're the most infuriating thing i've encountered in three thousand years. won't talk to me. won't fight me properly. just keeps scurrying through my walls helping humans—" he says the word with a fondness that surprises him, "and smelling like that."

you openly bristle. "smelling like what?"

"like i want to put my mouth on your throat and stay there."

and then he's moving and you're moving and the chase through level 0 is different this time because he knows these halls and the halls know him.

every exit you aim for seals shut a second before you reach it. he's herding you. corralling you. using the corridors like a net, and you're fast but he's home, and for the first time your new tricks can't save you.

he catches you at a dead end that didn't exist thirty seconds ago. pins you against the wall with the human body and you snarl, that full-frequency, form-cracking snarl, and he leans into it. absorbs the force of it, head tilting curiously.

his hands on your wrists. his weight pressing you flat. his borrowed hips pinning yours against the wallpaper and the contact...

through the human suits, through the false skin, the frequency of you pouring into the frequency of him. he can feel your power. younger and rawer than his, burning hot where his runs cold, and the clash of temperatures sends a shudder through both of you.

"got you," he breathes, his face inches from yours. eyes pale blue and half-lidded. that crooked grin. "my slippery, pretty thing. finally."

you bare your teeth. your human shape is flickering, your true form pressing against the suit's edges, and the glimpses he catches make his grip tighten. you're beautiful in both skins. the human one with its crafted warmth. the real one with its blazing, raw, impossible power.

"you're so fond of your little humans." murmured. his borrowed nose tracing the line of your jaw. "so gentle with them. so patient. and with me you're all claws and snarling." his lips brush your cheekbone. his scent washing over you at close range. old, cold, vast, the deep mineral smell of something that has existed for a long, long time. and underneath it, a musk you haven't encountered in any other entity. rich and dark and ancient. it fills your lungs and your pupils dilate. "it's not fair. I built a whole face for you."

"i'm not interested in conversation," you hiss, and underneath the hiss, a clicking.

rapid and sharp, rattling in the back of your borrowed throat. a threat display in a register that predates language. sub-vocal. primal.

his pupils blow wide, and a purr rolls through his chest in answer. deep and involuntary, resonating through the wall behind you. through the floor, through the false bones of both your suits.

his body responding to your threat with a mating call.

"no?" he pulls back just enough to look at you, tilts his head. that slow predatory angle. his eyes dark, his grin sharpening. "what are you interested in? because i've been chasing you for months and you keep running but you don't run fast enough and we both know you could. so either you're slower than I think—" he leans in, his mouth at your ear, his voice dropping to a register that makes the lights pulse, "or you like being caught by me."

your frequency spikes. he feels it lance through him, hot and sharp. and he grins against your ear because that was a reaction, a real one, and it tasted like wanting.

"that's what I thought."

a low chirr rolls from the base of your throat. involuntary. you clamp down on it immediately but he heard it, felt the vibration press against his collarbone where his chest meets yours. a responsive sound. the vocal equivalent of leaning in. and his purr deepens into a rolling, possessive rumble that makes the plaster behind your head crack.

you twist in his grip. testing. your wrists straining against his hands and your hips shifting against his and the friction sends a bolt of heat through both of you that neither can hide.

his jaw tightens and your breath catches. but you're still trying to escape, still snarling, still clicking that rapid threat-rattle. the trying has changed shape though. the struggling is pressing you harder against him instead of pulling you away. your body arching into the contact even as your mouth promises violence. and he knows it. reads the dissonance between your sounds and your movements.

"there you go," he murmurs, low. his thumbs stroking the insides of your wrists. "fighting so hard. snarling so pretty for me, but pressing closer the whole time." his hips roll against yours, slow and pinning, and a sound escapes you that isn't a snarl and isn't a threat. a high, thin, shaking note that makes his purr stutter and restart louder. "you feel that? that's what you do to me. three thousand years and nobody's made me make this sound. just you. just my pretty, infuriating, impossible—"

he nuzzles your throat. can't help it. can't stop himself. the scent is right there, concentrated at the juncture of jaw and neck, and he presses his borrowed nose into the soft skin and inhales until his whole form vibrates.

a clicking starts in his own throat. rapid, rhythmic, a staccato pulse that means want, want, want in a frequency older than the walls. his mouth follows, lips parting against your pulse, tongue grazing the skin. tasting.

and the taste is. god. better than the scent. richer. layered. the flavour of new power and old warmth and the electric sweetness underneath.

he groans against your throat. the groan cracks into a purr cracks into a clicking trill that no human mouth should produce, and the sound of it vibrating against your pulse and makes your back arch off the wall. involuntary.

your hips press against his, grinding, and both of you gasp. for one second, neither of you is performing. just two ancient things locked together in borrowed skins, clicking and purring in frequencies that make the corridor lights swing on their fixtures.

and you can feel him now. his scent flooding your senses at close range, that deep cold mineral musk that fills your head and makes your thoughts go liquid.

you hate how good it is. how your body responds to it, leaning into the source before you can stop yourself, your nose pressing into the crook of his neck to chase the smell and the clicking in your throat softening from threat into something dangerously close to curiosity.

he smells like the walls. like the deep places. like permanence. and against him, pressed this close, his borrowed body hard and cool and vibrating with that rolling purr. it feels good. it feels so good. and the goodness is a betrayal of every snarl you've ever aimed at him, and you can feel your resistance dissolving in the heat between your bodies.

he feels it too. feels the shift. the snarl going breathy. the clicking losing its sharp edge. your nose in his neck, breathing him in, and the intimacy of it, you smelling him, voluntarily, seeking his scent the way he's been desperately seeking yours, makes his whole form tremble with possessive hunger.

"that's it," he whispers urgently against your pulse. "i'm right here. i've been right here, little one."

"shut up," you breathe into his throat, but your lips graze the skin as you say it, and his hips jerk forward. a clicking trill pours out of him that he couldn't suppress if he tried.

his mouth traces the line of your throat. half kiss, half territorial claim. his purr is constant now, layered, harmonic, and he can feel yours answering. vibrating against his chest through the false skin. an echo. a response. two predators locked in a feedback loop of sound and scent. his canines lengthen for half a second, grazing the tendon in your neck, before he pulls them back.

"you taste even better than you smell." mumbled into your skin. his hands tightening on your wrists. his hips rolling against yours, slow, grinding. his purr deepening as yours answers. "do you have any idea what you do to me? three thousand years of nothing. no one. and then you stumble out of the walls on your fawn legs with your pretty face, and your impossible power. now I can't think about anything except—" his teeth graze your throat again, sharper this time, the mask slipping, "this. right here. the taste of you. let me have one more. just one more. I need—"

and you let him closer.

your wrists go slack in his grip. your head tips back against the wall, baring more throat. the gesture is submission in the language of predators. an offering. a door cracking open. the sight of it makes his vision swim with greed.

he presses in. his mouth opens wider against the exposed column of your neck, tongue flat against your pulse, tasting the frequency of you directly from the source. and your purr is loud now. loud and unguarded and rolling through both of your borrowed bodies and your free hand (he didn't notice your wrist slipping his grip) comes up and tangles in his borrowed hair, tugs, and the sound he makes against your throat is broken and animal.

your mouth finds the side of his neck. his breath catches. your lips part against the false skin, and he feels your tongue trace his pulse point, curious, testing, tasting him the way he's tasting you, and his whole body goes rigid with want.

your breath is hot against his throat. your teeth graze the tendon. he shudders and tilts his head to give you access and the vulnerability of it is staggering. the oldest predator alive, baring his throat to the newest, purring so hard his suit is cracking at the seams.

"yes," he breathes, eyes shut, his hand cradling the back of your skull now, holding you against his neck. "yes, go on, taste me, i'm yours to—"

you bite him.

you lunge forward and sink your teeth, your real teeth, the ones that don't belong to the human face, into the side of his borrowed throat. deep. through the false skin and the false muscle and into the absence underneath. black blood sprays across your mouth. across the wallpaper. across the floor.

a chunk of his fake throat tears free in your jaws and you spit it sideways, and the blood is on your lips and your chin and running down your own borrowed neck in dark rivulets.

and he laughs.

head thrown back, throat open and ruined and pouring black, laughing with a sound that shakes the corridor lights loose from the ceiling. laughing because the pain is extraordinary and the violence is extraordinary and YOU are extraordinary.

you just tore a piece out of the oldest thing in the backrooms with your brand-new teeth. your eyes are blazing with fury and arousal. your mouth is painted black with his blood and your purr is still going, still vibrating in your chest, mixing with the snarl, mixing with the clicking.

you wanted him. you let him close. you tasted his throat and then you ripped it open, and the duality of it, the curiosity and the savagery, the purring and the biting, is the most beautiful thing he's witnessed in three thousand years of seeing nothing worth looking at.

"oh," he manages, between laughs, blood dripping down his chest. his voice ragged and delighted and wrecked. "oh, you're going to be fun."

you shove him off while he's laughing. bolt. disappear through a crack between levels that he didn't know existed, which means you carved it yourself, just now, on the fly, ripping a new exit through HIS level with the brute force of your growing power. and that fact alone makes his ruined throat purr harder than the blood should allow.

he stands in the empty corridor, bleeding and grinning, licking the residual taste of you off his lips.

your scent all over his skin, your teeth-marks open and wet and pouring black down the front of his borrowed shirt. your blood on his tongue, sharp and sweet and electric and new. and underneath the pain and the blood: the ghost of your purr.

the memory of your nose pressed into his neck. the fraction of a second where your tongue traced his pulse and the curiosity in the touch was tender. you tasted him. you wanted to taste him. and then you tore him open because the wanting scared you and violence is the only language you trust.

the wound is already closing. the suit rebuilding. the black blood sinks into the carpet and the walls absorb the spatter and the corridor cleans itself because level 0 is good at keeping his secrets.

he touches the healing wound. presses his fingers into the tender new skin where your jaw clamped down. it's going to scar. he's going to let it scar. the oldest entity in the backrooms, wearing a bite mark from a newborn like a trophy.

and standing there in the empty corridor with your taste on his tongue and your mark on his throat, the decision crystallises.

he's going to claim you. not catch. not chase. not kill. claim.

you're going to be his. his territory. his mate. the thing that shares his levels and his nest and the vast dark silence that has been his only companion for three thousand years.

you with your brand-new teeth and your fawn legs and your tender human hands and your clicking threat-rattle and that one moment, that one devastating moment, where you pressed your face into his neck and breathed him in and your purr went soft, and your body went still and you wanted him.

before the fear kicked in. before the teeth followed. for one fraction of a second you wanted him and he felt it in every frequency he possesses.

he heard you.

he pushes off the wall, rolls his shoulders. fixes the suit's collar where your teeth destroyed it. runs his tongue along his bottom lip one more time, chasing the last trace of your taste.

and goes after you at once.

you're fast. you're getting faster every day. you carved your own exit through his home level with raw power that shouldn't exist in a creature your age.

he doesn't care. he has time. he has millennia of patience and your scent in his lungs and the taste of you on his tongue and a bite mark on his throat that proves you got close enough to touch. and he has the memory of your purr. that one small, involuntary, answering sound that you made against his chest before the fear swallowed it.

you can run. you can snarl. you can tear his throat out as many times as you like. he'll heal. he'll follow. he'll keep coming until the snarling softens and the purr comes back and you let him close enough to answer it with his own.

the hunt isn't a hunt anymore. it's a courtship.

mine, he thinks. the word settling into his frequency like roots into soil.

bobby tries again. deeper this time, more controlled. he's actually been practicing in the shower and the refined version is genuinely closer. close enough that BB's pupils dilate, and his head tilt shifts from confused to interested. his own purr kicks in, answering bobby's rumble with the real thing, and the resonance between the two of them makes the couch vibrate.

"oh," BB breathes, his voice dropping, his eyes going half-lidded. "oh, that's—you're saying—" his gaze locks onto bobby with a predatory focus that was not there three seconds ago. "do that again."

bobby, who has no survival instincts, does it again. louder.

BB's jaw tightens, his pupils blow wide. the purr coming out of him shifts register (from happy to hungry) and you watch him lean toward bobby with that coiled, intent stillness that you both know means someone is about to get pinned to a surface.

"bobby," you drawl. "I think you just said something dirty in entity."

"what? no, I was just—"

"you should both do it," BB suggests, his voice silk, looking between you. "at the same time."

you look at bobby. bobby looks at you. BB is looking at both of you like you're a meal he hasn't decided how to eat yet.

september 3, 1985

new girl transferred today. junior, like us. you walked into homeroom twelve minutes late with your bag strap sliding off your shoulder and sat down in the empty desk by the window and i forgot what mr. hendricks was saying. i still don't remember. it might have been about the civil war. it might have been about literally anything. you glanced out of the window, sunlight golden on you, and opened your notebook. i missed twenty minutes of american history.

this is probably not important enough to write down.

i'm not sure why i did.

september 8, 1985

i have three friends. bobby, terrence, and the library.

i'm not popular. i'm the thing that happens to popular when you drain all the charisma out of it and replace it with advanced calculus and the inability to make eye contact. bobby got the face AND the personality. i got the face and a brain that won't stop noticing details nobody asked for and a body that flinches when people touch it without warning.

identical twins. completely different experiences of being alive.

bobby walks into a room and the room lights up around him. i walk into a room and can't figure out where to stand. people talk and i miss the cues. the pauses where i'm supposed to laugh, the shifts in tone that signal a joke, the invisible dance of human interaction that everyone else learned naturally, and i'm still studying from the outside like a foreign language i can read but can't speak.

most people forget i'm in the room. teachers mix us up. girls look through me to find him. i've been called "bobby's brother" so many times it might as well be printed on my birth certificate.

i envy him sometimes. the effortlessness of it. the way connection comes to him like breathing. for me every conversation is a translation exercise: hear the words, decode the meaning, calculate the appropriate response, deliver it, check the face for signs i got it wrong. and it's so exhausting.

the library doesn't require any of it. the library doesn't care if i'm awkward.

september 11, 1985

her name is—

actually, i don't think i should write your name in this. just in case bobby finds it despite the very clear warning on the cover. i know you. that's enough.

bobby talked to you first because bobby talks to everyone first. you were sitting alone at lunch and he just walked over and sat down and said something that made you laugh (this startled, bright, involuntary sound) and by the time i got to the table you were already part of the group.

terrence likes you. bobby likes you. everybody likes you. you're warm in a way i don't have a word for. not loud-warm. just warm.

you said hi to me and i said hi back and that was the entire interaction.

i've been replaying it for three hours.

september 17, 1985

you sat next to me in calculus today. not because you had to. the desk was open and you chose it from three others, and sat down and smiled at me. you said, "hey, benny" like we've known each other for years.

benny.

nobody calls me benny.

september 29, 1985

you asked me to help you with calc after school. we sat at the kitchen table for an hour and a half and you leaned into my shoulder while i walked you through derivatives. your hair smelled like vanilla and you looked at me like i'd performed a miracle when you finally got it right.

nobody looks at me like that. bobby gets those looks. terrence gets those looks. i get the polite nod. the strained, patient smile. the "oh, you're bobby's brother" face that i've learned to expect.

you looked at me like i was a person who knew things you wanted to know. like the knowing mattered. like i was someone and not just adjacent to my twin.

i am in so much trouble.

october 14, 1985

you call me brendan. full name. sometimes benny when you're teasing. never BB, which is what everyone else calls me. never "the other twin." never "bobby's brother."

brendan.

i could live off the way you say it for a very long time.

october 22, 1985

kyle weber called me a freak in the hallway today. not the first time. i was carrying a stack of AP textbooks and he shoulder-checked me and they went everywhere and he laughed and said, "watch it, freak." i was on my knees picking up books and trying to disappear into the linoleum.

and then you appeared out of nowhere. i don't know where you came from. one second i was alone on the floor and the next you were crouching beside me, stacking my books, and then you stood up and turned to kyle. you said something so quiet i couldn't hear it and his face went white. paper white. he looked at you and then at me and then he stalked away and he hasn't spoken to me since.

i asked you what you said to him. you handed me my books and shrugged. "i told him if he touches you again i'll make sure the whole school knows he cried during the sex ed video in freshman year."

"...did he?"

"oh, absolutely. terrence told me. the power of information, benny."

and you linked your arm through mine and walked me to class.

people touch me and i flinch. always have. bobby's arm around my shoulder makes my skin crawl. terrence's back-slaps make me clench my jaw. casual contact (a stranger's elbow on the bus, a classmate brushing past in the hallway) registers in my body as a low-grade alarm.

i don't know why. i've never known why. my skin has always been too loud for other people's hands.

you linked your arm through mine and i didn't flinch. i didn't tense. i didn't have to override the instinct because the instinct wasn't there. your touch landed on my skin and my whole nervous system went quiet. warm. calm. like coming inside after hours in the cold and standing next to a fire and feeling the tightness in your muscles release one strand at a time.

you're protective of me. you took one look at the quiet twin who can't make eye contact and decided he was yours to defend and nobody asked you to and you did it anyway.

i have never felt warm the way i feel warm when you do this. like the warmth isn't just temperature but a person. like i've been standing outside in the cold my whole life and you opened the door to a warm house.

november 2, 1985

you found me in the library during a free period. everyone else was at the pep rally. i was reading and you sat down across from me and said "i don't really do pep rallies" and opened your own book and we sat there in silence for an hour.

i've never been quiet with another person and had it feel like a gift before.

silence with other people feels like a failure. like i'm supposed to be filling the space and i can't find the right thing to fill it with. every pause is a question i'm getting wrong. with you the silence felt like a room we were sharing on purpose.

the noise in my head (the constant humming calculation of how to be a person in front of other people) it stops when you're near. just stops. like a machine powering down. and underneath the silence there's this calm i don't have a name for. this sense that i can stop performing and just exist and you won't find the existing strange or off-putting.

when you left you squeezed my shoulder and said, "this was nice, benny."

i put my forehead on the table and stayed there for a while.

november 9, 1985

a thing i've never told anyone:

i hate being touched, and i am desperate to be touched. both at the same time. all the time.

other people's hands on me feel like static. wrong pressure, wrong temperature. i pull away from hugs. i stiffen under friendly arms. mom stopped trying to hold my hand when i was eleven because i kept pulling free without meaning to and the hurt on her face was worse than the contact.

but when you touch me (your hand on my arm, your head on my shoulder, your fingers fixing my collar) my body does the opposite thing. it leans. toward you. into you. like i've been cold for sixteen years and you're the first source of heat and the relief of it is so overwhelming i could cry.

i want more. always more. every touch you give me i hoard and replay and it's never enough. i want your hand in my hair. your arms around my waist. your forehead against mine. i want to be held by you until the static stops and it only stops with you and i don't understand why.

i don't think i need to understand why. i just need more.

november 15, 1985

i can see it happening. you and bobby. the way you orbit each other is starting to change shape.

the group hangs out and i watch your eyes find him across the room. i watch his find you. there's a gravity forming between you two that everyone can feel and nobody's named yet but they will. terrence already calls you bobby's girl behind your back and you're not, not yet, but the "yet" is so, so heavy.

you light up when he walks in. i know that brightness because i feel it when you walk in and i have to look away before anyone sees.

you're going to end up with bobby. everyone in this school can see the shape of it forming. bobby and the new girl. the twin everybody notices and the girl everybody likes.

i'm being dramatic. it's only been two months. i barely know you.

except i do. i know you hate the crusts on sandwiches but eat them anyway because wasting food makes you feel guilty. i know you hum when you're concentrating and you don't realise you're doing it and the song is never one i recognise. i know you bite your bottom lip when you're nervous and the left side harder than the right.

i know you. i've been paying attention since september.

i need to stop.

december 19, 1985

christmas party at terrence's. you wore a red sweater too big for you and had a stupid reindeer pin on your collar. bobby was doing his thing. arm around you, charming and bright, making the room laugh. i watched you lean into him. two bodies learning how to fit together.

you found me hiding in the kitchen and bumped your hip against mine with a crooked smile. "you're hiding."

"i'm making a drink."

"you're hiding. come back out. i miss you."

you said i miss you and i'd been in the other room for ten minutes.

you dragged me back by my sleeve and sat me down next to you and kept your hand on my knee for the rest of the night. i don't think you noticed you were doing it.

i noticed nothing else.

january 9, 1986

i've started dreading the question. the one bobby and terrence throw around like a football. "so when are you gonna get a girlfriend, bennett?" bobby grins when he says it. means it lovingly. doesn't know the answer is a slow knife.

terrence is worse. "bro there are girls literally lining up for the bobby franklin face and you're just... sitting there. reading. with that face. it's criminal!"

i laugh it off. they laugh. everyone laughs. good old brendan. hopeless with girls. still a virgin. probably going to be a virgin forever because he can't string two sentences together in front of a pretty girl.

except that's not it. that's not it at all.

something is wrong with me.

i can't find anyone attractive. i've tried. jenny park is objectively beautiful and when she talked to me at lunch i felt nothing. matt from chem lab is objectively beautiful and when he sat next to me i felt nothing. the magazine under bobby's bed that he thinks i don't know about—nothing.

my body doesn't respond to people. it doesn't want anyone. i look at classmates the way i look at furniture. vague acknowledgment that they exist. no heat. no pull. no interest.

except you.

you walk into a room and every nerve ending in my body lights up. you touch my arm and my skin hums for an hour. you lean into my shoulder and i stop breathing. you, exclusively. only you. like my body was made with a single setting and the setting is you and there's no alternative use.

i don't know what this means. i don't know if this is normal.

i'm really scared it isn't.

march 8, 1986

bobby asked you out today.

he told me first. came into my room and sat on my bed and said "i'm gonna ask her" and his voice was trying to hide the fact he was scared. going casual, going loose, like if he holds the words lightly enough they won't be able to hurt him. and i knew what he was really asking. because dad is still fresh. the cheating. the years of lies, mom finding out, the divorce that split the house in half.

bobby was fourteen when he decided love was the thing that wrecks you. swore he'd never open that door. never let anyone close enough to do what dad did to mom.

and now he wants to try. for you.

he deserves this. after everything dad did, after watching his ability to trust get gutted by a man who was supposed to teach him how to love, bobby deserves someone who makes him brave enough to try.

i told him to go for it. meant it.

he came back an hour later. grinning so wide his face couldn't hold it. you said yes.

of course you said yes. you've been saying yes to bobby since the day you sat down at our lunch table.

i hugged him. told him congratulations. meant it.

went to my room. closed the door. sat on the floor with my back against the bed and stared at the wall until my eyes ached.

march 22, 1986

movies. bobby and you, me and terrence. your first group outing as a couple.

bobby had his arm around you. you had your head on his shoulder. you shared popcorn. your leg was pressed against mine the whole film. probably because the seats were small. i didn't move.

i should have moved.

april 5, 1986

you had a fight with your mom. showed up at our house at 10 pm, crying. bobby wasn't home.

you stood on the porch and i opened the door and your face crumpled and you blurted out, "is it ok if i just sit with you for a while?"

i made you tea. you talked and i listened. after an hour you ran out of words and leaned sideways and put your head on my shoulder and fell asleep.

you slept for two hours. your hand curled in the fabric of my shirt. your breathing slow and deep. i sat perfectly still. did not adjust my position even when my arm went completely numb. i would have let my arm fall off before disturbing you.

bobby came home at midnight. "thanks for taking care of my girl, man."

my girl.

the dent where your head rested stayed warm for a long time after you left.

april 12, 1986

short entry.

you fixed the collar of my shirt in the hallway today. just reached up and folded it down. your knuckles brushing my neck. "there. can't have you walking around looking rumpled, benny."

i can still feel your knuckles. four hours later. a stripe of contact burned into the side of my throat.

june 18, 1986

pool party at terrence's. you were in a bikini.

i'm not going to describe it. i'm going to acknowledge that you were in a bikini and that i spent four hours in a california swimming pool and was never warm. because all my blood had relocated to the problem of not looking at you and the secondary problem growing in my swim trunks from the failure of the first problem.

you asked me to put sunscreen on your back. i did it. my hands were steady. nobody watching could have told that the inside of my head was a five-alarm fire.

"thanks, benny." and you went back to the pool and bobby threw you in. you screamed and laughed and i excused myself to the bathroom and put my head between my knees.

august 30, 1986

senior year. last year of being in the same building as you every day.

bobby and you are solid. you're good together. he opens up around you in ways he doesn't with anyone else. you soften him. you make his edges less defensive. when he's with you, bobby is almost the person he'd be if dad hadn't shattered his faith that the people who love you will stay.

i want to be selfless about this. the good brother. the one who steps aside and means it.

i'm not that person.

i love you. i love you and it's getting worse. it was supposed to fade. crushes fade. this isn't fading. this is setting foundations, pouring concrete into the ground floor of my chest and building upward.

september 14, 1986

bobby made a joke today at dinner. mom was asking about girls at school and bobby grinned and elbowed me and said, "bennett here is saving himself. for what, we're not sure. science, probably."

everyone laughed. mom. bobby. even terrence, who was over for dinner.

i laughed too. good old brendan. the virgin. the nerd. probably going to lose it to a textbook.

i went upstairs and sat on my bed and thought: there is something seriously wrong with me. because i'm seventeen and i've never kissed anyone and i don't WANT to kiss anyone. i look at every other person in my school and my body is silent. flat. dead. no heat, no curiosity, no pull. and then you walk into a room and i can feel my heartbeat in my fingertips and my mouth goes dry and i want to put my hands on you so badly my joints ache with it.

it's only you. it has only ever been you. and the exclusivity of it terrifies me because what if this is broken? what if i'm wired wrong? what if the reason i can't want anyone else is because something in me got stuck, got fixed in place the day you sat down in homeroom, and it will never unstick?

what if i'm going to want you, only you, for the rest of my life?

what if i already know the answer?

october 31, 1986

halloween. you dressed as an alien. green face paint, antennae that kept falling sideways. you asked me what i was and i said "a serial killer, they look like everyone else" and you laughed so hard you doubled over and grabbed my arm.

"brendan that's the funniest thing you've ever said. you have to say that to everyone who asks."

so i did, and people laughed. because you told me to deliver the line and so i did and the fact that people laughed at my joke felt good but the fact that you gave me the joke felt like being handed a lit candle in a dark room.

you fixed my hair at one point. reached up and pushed a strand off my forehead. casual. meaningless to you. your fingertips grazed my temple and i can still feel it hours later. a warm line where your hand was.

november 8, 1986

some senior from the baseball team cornered me after school. not kyle, a new one. shoved me into the lockers and called me a faggot because apparently reading in public is a sexual orientation now.

i didn't tell anyone. didn't need to.

you found out anyway. i don't know how. terrence, probably.

you didn't say anything to me about it, but two days later the senior apologised. to my face. in the hallway. with stiff, terrified demeanour. an angel of wrath had informed him of the consequences of future behaviour.

i asked you what you did.

"nothing." you were doing your homework, not looking at me. "he just had a change of heart."

"a change of heart."

"people grow, benny."

you're terrifying when you want to be, and i'm so in love with you i could die.

november 21, 1986

a guy at terrence's party wouldn't leave you alone. i don't know his name. some friend of a friend from out of town. he kept touching your arm after you pulled away. kept leaning into your space. you smiled politely and shifted sideways, and he followed.

bobby was across the room with a group of guys smoking something he shouldn't be and didn't see it. and you did that thing you do. that swallowing thing. that "it's fine, i can handle it" thing, and i watched your shoulders tighten, your smile going strained, and my vision narrowed.

i don't remember crossing the room. i don't remember what i said.

i remember his face. the way his expression shifted when he looked at me. i'm used to people looking through me, looking past me. this was different. this was a person looking at me and seeing a locked door they did not want to open.

i don't know what i said. that should scare me. it doesn't.

you found me in the kitchen after. leaned against the counter next to me. didn't ask what happened. just knocked your shoulder against mine and said "my hero" in that teasing, soft voice and i felt the anger drain out of me so fast it left me lightheaded.

but it's still in there. i felt it. a cold, patient, completely calm willingness to do damage if anyone puts their hands on you again. it doesn't feel like rage. rage is hot and loud. that's bobby's territory.

this is different. this is a door i didn't know i had, and behind it is a version of me that would do very quiet, very permanent things to protect you.

i don't know what to do with that information. so i'm putting it here.

december 1, 1986

i hate this

why can't i just be normal

everyone around me is dating. kissing. losing their virginity in backseats and bedrooms and talking about it at lunch like it's a rite of passage i keep failing to reach.

and i sit there and i listen and i feel nothing. no envy for the act itself. only this hollow awareness that i'm watching a movie everyone else is in and i'm still in the audience.

bobby asked me last week if i'd kissed anyone yet. gentle about it, for once. no joke. just "hey man, you doing okay? you know it's fine if you haven't, right?" and the kindness of it made it worse because he was being a good brother and i couldn't tell him the truth.

the truth is that there is one person i want to kiss until my lips go raw, and she's dating you and every other mouth on earth repulses me and i don't know why i'm built this way. i can't talk to anyone about it because the answer ("i'm not attracted to anyone except my twin brother's girlfriend") sounds like a confession that would get me committed.

what is wrong with me? genuinely. is this a disorder? is there a name for wanting one person so completely that everyone else might as well be furniture?

is this what love is or is this what obsession is and how do you tell the difference when you're eighteen and you've never been touched before

december 24, 1986

christmas eve dinner. you gave me a book. wrapped in paper you decorated yourself. little silver stars drawn by hand all over the blue.

"i saw it and thought of you."

six words. i saw it and thought of you. six words now living inside my chest cavity.

it was a first edition of a book i mentioned wanting three months ago. in passing. once. you remembered.

i held on to the wrapping paper after. folded the stars inside a textbook. i'll keep them.

february 1, 1987

i woke up at 3 am from a dream about you and i can't go back to sleep.

i'm not going to write down what happened. i'm not going to describe the way you looked or the sounds you made or what i was doing to you when you

no.

cold shower. stood under the water until my teeth chattered. didn't help. i can still feel the ghost of your body against mine. my brain invented the weight of you, the heat, the way you would arch into me if i

STOP.

this is just biology. i'm eighteen. this is normal.

it's not normal. nothing about how i want you is normal. the depth of it, the weight. i didn't dream about a body. i dreamed about YOUR body. your curves. the pitch of your laugh gone breathless. the way you'd say my name, not bobby's, mine, brendan, with your hands in my hair.

i want you so badly i can't breathe and i have no right to and the wanting is going to eat me alive.

february 14, 1987

valentine's day. bobby gave you a necklace. you nearly cried and kissed him and terrence heckled you both.

i watched from the kitchen doorway.

i didn't get you anything. getting you a valentine would be insane.

march 15, 1987

you told me today that you think i'm going to change the world.

we were sitting on the back porch. just us. you were eating an apple and reading over my harvard application essay and you put it down and looked at me and said seriously, "brendan, this is incredible. you're going to get in and then you're going to change the world and i'm going to tell everyone i knew you when you do."

and i thought: you know me now. you're the only person who knows me now.

may 14, 1987

bonfire at the beach. bobby and terrence went to get more wood. you were sitting next to me. close. your knee touching mine. the fire was low and orange and the light was painting your skin gold, catching the shadows in the dip of your collarbone, the curve of your neck.

and all i could think was: your throat. the soft patch below your ear where your jaw meets your neck. if i leaned over, if i put my mouth there. just my lips. how you would taste. salt and warmth and the lingering smoke from the fire. how your pulse would feel against my tongue. how your breath would catch.

i sat next to you with the dying fire and the crashing waves and bobby's laugh carrying from down the beach and i thought about putting my mouth on your throat for forty-five straight minutes.

you leaned your head on my shoulder. "i love nights like this."

"yeah," i said.

the fire burned to embers. i could still feel your pulse in my imagination. beating against a mouth i will never put there.

may 28, 1987

you held my hand today. just for a second. we were crossing a parking lot and a car came too fast around the corner and you grabbed my hand and pulled me back and then you didn't let go for the whole walk to the truck. just your fingers laced through mine. swinging between us. you were talking about finals and i was listening and your hand was in mine and it was a tuesday and i would sell my soul to feel this on a wednesday.

june 1, 1987

i want to touch you so badly my hands hurt

not ONLY sexually. i want to brush the hair off your face. i want to hold your hand in the car. i want to fall asleep with your head on my chest. i want the casual touches. the ones bobby gets without asking for them, the hand on the arm, the head on the shoulder, the absent fingers tracing patterns on skin while watching tv.

i want to be allowed to touch you the way he's allowed. not stolen moments dressed up as friendship. real ones. with intent. with honesty.

god i'm so fucking pathetic

june 9, 1987

graduation. we did it. senior year, done.

you found me in the crowd after. pushed through bobby and terrence and your parents and my mom and everyone else and grabbed me in a hug so tight my cap fell off. "WE DID IT BENNY" screamed directly into my ear with enough force to cause permanent hearing damage.

i hugged you tight and you laughed and your gown was billowing in the wind, and your hair was in my face. i could feel your ribs expanding with laughter against my arms and for ten seconds the world was only this. you in my arms. laughing.

bobby got the kiss. terrence got the secret handshake. i got the scream and the spin and i would trade everything i own for a lifetime supply of being the person you run to first.

july 4, 1987

sparklers at the beach. you were sitting next to me in the sand. our shoulders touching. the sky exploding in gold and red above us.

you turned to me, sparkler in hand, gold light on your face. "are you happy, benny?"

"yeah. i'm happy."

and right then i was. the wanting was still there, bedrock-deep, permanent. but for ten minutes it was quiet enough to hear the waves over it.

you put your head on my shoulder. i put my cheek on your hair.

i am never going to love anyone else. i know this the way i know chemical formulas. fact. fixed. tested and proven across every variable.

you are the only constant in my universe.

august 7, 1987

acceptance letter came. harvard. full ride.

you were the second person i showed. bobby first, because brotherhood, but you were right behind him. you took the letter and read it, your hands were shaking and you looked up at me and your eyes were full. you threw your arms around my neck and squeezed so hard i couldn't breathe.

"i knew it," you whispered wetly into my collar. "i knew it. i told you. i told you, benny."

and underneath the pride and the joy, so clear i could taste it... sadness. that's really far away. that's the other side of the country. and you didn't say it but your arms tightened and you held on longer than you needed to and i could feel the grief of it in your grip.

bobby grinned and hugged me. terrence lifted me off the ground cheering loudly. mom cried.

you held my hand under the table at dinner that night. three straight hours. nobody saw. your thumb tracing circles on my palm while everyone talked about the bright, impossible future.

i'm going to remember your thumb on my palm long after i've forgotten the letter.

august 28, 1987

last night before harvard.

you came over. just you. bobby was working late and terrence had a gig down at santa cruz. you knocked on my door and held up a wrapped package and decalred, "before you go."

it was a mixtape, but not just a mixtape. the case was hand-decorated with tiny drawings. inside jokes, all of them. a stick figure at a desk labeled "nerd at work." a tiny calculus equation with a heart instead of an equals sign. a drawing of me with ridiculous oversized glasses. on the spine, in your handwriting: "for benny. so you don't forget us."

i turned it over. on the back you'd written every track title and next to each one a note.

track 3 — this is the one i was humming during the calc final that made you glare at me. track 7 — for driving at night with the windows down. track 12 — listen to this one when you miss home. and by home i mean me.

and by home i mean me.

i stared at it for so long you got nervous. "is it stupid? it's stupid. you probably have a walkman with actual good music and this is—"

"it's perfect."

you looked at me. i looked at you. the room was very quiet and very small. you were very close and i could have kissed you. the distance between your mouth and mine was six inches and i could have closed it and everything would have changed.

i didn't. because i couldn't do that to bobby. i couldn't.

"i'm really going to miss you, benny."

"i'll call every week."

"you better."

i listened to the tape in bed that night with headphones on. track 12. over and over and over. your voice in the liner notes. and by home i mean me.

i held the case against my chest and closed my eyes, pretending your hand was there instead.

september 2, 1987

you hugged me at the truck. held on for a long time. your face in my neck and your hands gripping the back of my shirt.

"every week, brendan. if you forget about me—"

"i won't forget about you."

too fast, too serious, too much truth packed into a sentence that was supposed to be light. you pulled back and looked at me and your eyes were searching my face for something.

i don't know if you found it.

you kissed my cheek. close enough that if i'd turned my head half an inch your lips would have been on mine.

i didn't turn my head.

i got in the truck. bobby drove. i watched you in the side mirror, standing in the driveway with your arms wrapped around yourself, getting smaller and smaller.

september 18, 1987

i thought distance would help.

three thousand miles between your body and mine. no more shoulder-touches. no more vanilla smell. no more knee-against-knee in dark movie theaters. the theory was sound: remove the stimulus, reduce the response. basic conditioning.

the theory is wrong.

i miss you like an organ. like something was cut out of me at the airport and i'm walking around with the wound still open. i reach for the phone every hour. i play the mixtape until the ribbon starts to wear. i sit in lectures surrounded by brilliant, interesting people and i feel nothing. flat. grey.

here's what's strange though. i'm getting better at the other thing. the people thing.

harvard is full of people like me. the ones who read too much and talk too little and know the periodic table better than their classmates' names. for the first time in my life "quiet and intense" isn't the wrong setting. it's the default. i can hold a conversation in a study group without running the translation the whole time. i can sit in a dining hall and not feel like i'm performing personhood for an audience that isn't buying it.

i'm finding myself here, in small ways. figuring out which parts of my strangeness are flaws and which are just features nobody had a use for in santa clara.

but you remain the eye of the storm. the one quiet place where everything inside me unwinds.

harvard is teaching me how to exist around other people. you taught me that existing around another person could feel like rest instead of labour. and no amount of social growth, no amount of learning to make small talk in a dining hall, will ever replicate what you give me just by being near.

the silence that isn't empty. the touch that doesn't sting. the calm.

i am homesick for a person, not a place.

october 3, 1987

a girl in my organic chemistry study group asked me out. claire. smart. funny. objectively attractive.

i said yes because i'm supposed to say yes. because normal people say yes. because bobby would say yes and terrence would say yes, and this is what nineteen-year-olds do.

we got coffee. she was kind. she laughed at my poor jokes. she touched my hand across the table.

i felt nothing. absolutely nothing. like pressing my palm against a wall and waiting for warmth that never comes.

she leaned in to kiss me at the end and i let her and her mouth was on mine and all i could think was: wrong. wrong lips. wrong pressure. wrong taste. wrong person. WRONG.

i pulled away and said i was sorry and walked home. stood in the shower and scrubbed my mouth raw, and felt sick with how much i wanted it to have been you.

october 19, 1987

you called tonight. bobby was at work and you were bored and you called. we talked for two hours. my roommate left after twenty minutes because apparently i was "smiling weird."

you told me about your week. clark's being terrible. terrence's band. the stray cat on your porch. you told me everything and i held the phone with my eyes closed and you were there. in my ear. telling me about a cat like it was the most important news in the world.

"i miss you, benny." soft. sleepy.

"i miss you too."

the safest true thing i've ever said. because i miss you is allowed. i miss you lives in the acceptable zone. i miss you is what a friend says.

i miss you the way a lung misses air. i miss you so much i have rearranged my entire week around the possibility that you might call again.

but "i miss you too" is what i said.

november 12, 1987

there's a guy in my anatomy class. david. he's been friendly. eating lunch together, studying. today he put his hand on my knee under the table and looked at me with a question in his eyes.

nothing. nothing nothing nothing. i am broken or i am built wrong or i am simply, irrevocably, yours in a way that excludes every other human being on this planet regardless of what they look like or what's between their legs.

i told him i was flattered. i meant it. i am flattered that anyone wants someone like me.

i just can't want them back. the machinery only runs for you. i've tested it now. both genders. kind people, attractive people, people who deserved better than the hollow version of me sitting across from them. and every single time the same flat nothing. the same grey wall.

then you call and the wall dissolves and every colour rushes back in, and i think: oh. there i am. i was here the whole time. i just only exist when you're nearby.

distance was supposed to fix this. i was supposed to get better.

i'm not getting better. i'm getting worse. three thousand miles and i am worse.

november 26, 1987

thanksgiving. came home. you saw me in the doorway and your face lit up. you ran at me and jumped and i caught you. your arms locked around my neck, your face buried in my shoulder. you were laughing and squeezing me so tight i couldn't breathe.

i could have held you like that until the sun burned itself out.

bobby was right behind me. you let go of me and hugged him and kissed him and you stood in the hallway with your foreheads together and i carried my bag upstairs.

you run at me. you kiss him. the running is enthusiastic and warm and genuine. the kissing is intimate and private and his.

i want the kiss. i'd burn for the kiss.

and i hate myself for wanting it because bobby is my brother and he's happy and he deserves this after dad.

he deserves this more than me.

december 3, 1987

i think loving you is going to kill me.

i wish i could take my heart out and set it aside. put it in a jar on a shelf. come back for it when it's safe. but it's never going to be safe, is it? there's no version of my life where loving you is safe. there's only the version where i carry it and i'm going to carry it till my heart stops.

february 14, 1988

valentine's day. i mailed you a book. astronomy. because you said once, in october, that you wished you knew more about constellations. the note said: "saw this, thought you'd like it — B." casual. friendly.

you called to thank me. "brendan bennett franklin, you're the sweetest person alive."

i sat on my dorm room floor with the phone cord wrapped around my finger and thought: i am not sweet. i am a liar. i bought you a valentine and called it casual and you believed me because you don't see me. you look right at me with those warm eyes and you see a friend. a brother. a good person.

you don't see the thing underneath that wants to kiss you until neither of us can stand.

april 16, 1988

a girl at a party. i don't remember her name. i was a little drunk and she was pretty and i thought: just try. just try to be normal. to want someone attainable. someone who isn't your brother's girlfriend.

we went to her room. she kissed me and took her shirt off and i looked at her and felt... revulsion. not at her. at the wrongness of it. at my own body's flat refusal to participate in anything that wasn't you. i made an excuse. left. walked home in the cold.

the distance was supposed to make this better. the new people, the new context. a fresh start without you in every room.

but you're in every room. you're in the phone on my desk and the mixtape in my walkman and the book on my shelf with the silver stars on the wrapping paper that i kept like a goddamn shrine. you're in the way i scan every crowd for your face. you're in the hollow feeling when i don't find it.

what is wrong with me? what is fundamentally, structurally wrong with me that i can't want anyone who isn't you?

i sat on my bathroom floor and put my head in my hands and asked myself if this is what the rest of my life looks like. a series of empty rooms with the wrong people in them. a body that only responds to one person. a lock with one key and the key belongs to my brother's girlfriend.

yes. that's what it looks like. i know the answer already. i've always known.

april 30, 1988

i made a list today. of reasons to stop.

she's bobby's girlfriend.

bobby is my twin.

bobby loves her.

she loves bobby.

i am betraying him with every thought i have about her.

i am betraying HER with every thought i have about her because she trusts me and i'm lying to her.

i am twenty years old and i have never had a normal sexual or romantic interaction with another human being because my body won't cooperate with anyone who isn't her.

this is not love. this is fixation. i'm sick. i'm sick in the head.

if she knew what i think about when i hear her voice on the phone she would never speak to me again.

i am a bad person.

i stared at the list for a long time. each point is factually accurate. logically sound. irrefutable.

you called an hour later and called out happily, "benny, tell me about your day" and the list caught fire and burned to ash before you finished the sentence.

i am a bad person who loves a good person and the loving makes me worse.

may 19, 1988

my roommate has a girlfriend. they have sex in our room while i'm at the library and they think i don't know. i know because the sheets are different when i come back and the room smells like sweat and perfume and he's got that dazed, satisfied grin.

i looked at him last night (happy, spent, normal) and thought: why can't i be like that? why can't i want someone who wants me back? someone available. someone whose last name isn't franklin.

tried again in my head. conjured up every attractive person i've met at harvard. ran through them one by one, tried to imagine kissing them, touching them. like flipping through a catalogue of locked doors.

and then i thought about your hands in my hair and my whole body responded so violently i had to excuse myself to the bathroom.

why am i like this

why am i like this why am i like this why am i like this

three thousand miles. eighteen months of distance. dozens of kind, attractive, available people and my body is a locked room with your name on the door and no other key fits and i have tried every key and they all feel like violations.

i'm so tired of trying and failing and trying and failing and coming back to the same truth every single time:

it's you. it was always you. it will only ever be you.

and i can never, ever have you.

june 7, 1988

summer. home again.

bobby and you have been together two years and the cracks are starting to show. you don't talk about it. that's your flaw, the swallowing. the folding up of hurt into small squares and tucking them away.

i see it though. the way you wait for bobby to call and he doesn't. the way you make plans and he forgets. the way you press your lips together for one second when you're disappointed before the smile goes back on. nobody else catches it.

i catch it every time.

i hate him for it. my twin. who i love more than anyone except you. i hate him for having the thing i would dismantle myself to have and treating it like it'll always be there.

you won't always be there. patience has a floor and one day you'll hit it.

i can't say this to him. he'll hear what it really is. jealousy dressed up as concern.

july 22, 1988

you came over while bobby was at work. back porch. popsicles. you were telling me about a movie and your lips were stained red and a drop ran down your wrist and you licked it off and i—

i need to stop writing these down

"you're staring, benny."

"you have popsicle on your chin."

you wiped it off, laughing.

you don't know. you genuinely don't know what your mouth does to me, what your hands do to me, what the sound of my name in your voice does to me.

if you knew, you'd stop coming over. you'd stop touching my arm and leaning into me and putting your head on my shoulder. and losing those things would end me faster than never having had them.

good old brendan. safe brendan. bobby's quiet brother who helps with calculus and always has a book.

the mask stays on.

august 3, 1988

you fell asleep on my bed today while i was studying. lying on your stomach with one arm hanging off the edge and your face turned toward me and your mouth open and you were drooling on my pillow.

drooling. on my pillow.

the love i feel for you hit me so hard i couldn't move for half an hour.

august 15, 1988

please let me stop loving her

please. whoever is listening. let me stop.

let me wake up one morning and feel nothing when she says my name. let the hugs feel like hugs instead of slow immolation. let me sit next to her without mapping every centimetre between our bodies. let me be the friend she thinks i am instead of the liar i know i am.

i don't want this anymore. it hurts too much. please, it hurts. three years and it's only getting deeper and i can't

i can't switch it off. i don't know how. i don't think there is a how.

i think this is just what i am now. a boy who loves a girl who loves his brother.

september 6, 1988

back at harvard. unpacking. found one of your hair ties tangled in my clean laundry. you must have left it when you were over last.

i put it on my wrist. wore it all day. took it off before bed and put it on the nightstand and looked at it and thought: this is the closest thing i have to wearing a ring from you.

a hair tie. on a nightstand. in a dorm room in harvard.

september 22, 1988

i want to be normal i want to be normal i want to be normal i want to be normal i want to be happy please i just want to be happy

bad day.

october 10, 1988

you called at 1 am. crying. fighting with bobby. your voice thick and wet.

"i don't know what to do, benny. i love him so much and he won't let me in."

and i sat on my dorm room bed with the phone pressed to my ear until it ached and told you:

"you're the strongest person i know."

and you said: "why can't he just say it, brendan? why can't he just say he loves me?"

i love you. i love you. i love you. three words bobby can't get past his teeth and i can't get past my conscience.

"he loves you. he's just scared."

"i know."

"give him time."

"i always give him time."

and i wanted to say: stop giving him time. stop waiting. he's wasting you. he's burning daylight with a girl made of sunlight and he doesn't even see it.

i said: "you deserve someone who says it."

long pause. your breathing slowing.

"thanks, benny. you always know what to say."

i don't know what to say. i know what not to say. there's a vast, dark, freezing difference.

march 30, 1989

spring break. you picked me up from the airport. standing at arrivals in a sundress holding a sign that said NERD in huge letters.

you dropped the sign and ran and i caught you and your laugh was in my ear and the sundress was thin and your body was warm against mine.

you drove us home. windows down. radio on. singing badly. your hand squeezing my arm at a red light.

i would burn harvard to the ground for this. for your hand on my arm, shaking me because you were so happy to see me. for the wind in your hair. for your voice saying my name like it's your favourite word.

i would give up everything. the degree. the future. the carefully constructed life three thousand miles away.

i would give up all of it for one day where you're mine.

one day. and then i'd give you back. i'd carry the memory for the rest of my life and it would be enough.

it would have to be.

HE FUCKING FORGOT, 1989

bobby forgot your birthday.

you didn't tell me. you wouldn't. i found out because terrence called me, and said "dude, bobby got too high and forgot" and his voice was tight with the anger he rarely shows.

i called you from the payphone in the hallway and said happy birthday and you said "thanks, benny" in that voice. that bright, fine, everything's-fine voice that i can see through like glass. and i heard the crack underneath it and the love hit me and the rage hit me in the same breath.

i called bobby after, and i don't raise my voice. i have raised my voice maybe five times in my life. but i said his name in a way that made him go quiet immediately on the other end and i said "you forgot her birthday" and the silence that followed was long and guilty.

"shit," he said. "shit, benny, i—"

"call her. right now. and if you ever do this again—"

i didn't finish the sentence. didn't need to. bobby heard what was underneath it. heard the edge i keep so carefully hidden, the cold thing that lives behind the shyness, and for a second i think he heard the OTHER thing, too.

the reason the anger was so hot, the reason it came so fast, the reason his twin brother was calling from three thousand miles away trembling with fury over a forgotten birthday that wasn't his to remember.

he called you. sent flowers the next day, took you out for dinner. you forgave him because you always forgive him.

i sat in the phone booth for ten minutes after with my head against the glass. my hands were shaking. not from anger. from how close i'd come to saying too much. from the size of the feeling pressing against my ribs. from the knowledge that i would burn my relationship with my brother to the ground to protect you from pain and the fact that this doesn't make me a good person.

it makes me a dangerous one.

may 2, 1989

your voice on the phone tonight, laughing about a terrible customer at clark's, imitating his voice, making me laugh until my stomach hurt.

i pressed the phone so hard against my ear it left a red mark and i thought: i don't want to die without having kissed you. i don't care about anything else. the degree. the career. the future. i just don't want to die without knowing what your mouth tastes like.

that's all.

june 14, 1989

you were lying on a blanket in the back yard. reading. the sun was on your legs and your feet were bare and you was chewing on a pen cap. your hair was pulled up and the back of your neck was exposed.

i sat on the porch steps and watched the back of your neck for twenty minutes.

twenty minutes. the back of your neck.

i am beyond help.

july 4, 1989

short one.

sparklers again. your shoulder against mine. same beach. same sand. same sky.

different year. same ache. same shape. same boy sitting in the dark loving the same girl who doesn't know.

happy fourth of july.

september 20, 1989

second year of pre-med. my hands shake from caffeine. i forgot to eat yesterday.

you called. i picked up on the first ring. i will always pick up on the first ring.

"brendan bennett franklin. eat something, drink water, and go to bed."

"i have a paper—"

"go. to. bed. if you sound this wrecked tomorrow i'm driving down myself."

i ate a sandwich. drank water. went to bed. fell asleep holding the phone.

you mailed me a care package last month. my favourite snacks. a note that said: "don't die. i need you."

i folded the note and put it in my wallet. i'll probably be buried with it.

november 23, 1989

thanksgiving. you saw me in the kitchen and your face did the light-up. the full-body brightening.

my hair is longer, brushing my ears and curling at the nape. you reached up and pushed it back from my forehead. your fingers dragged across my scalp and my whole body went rigid.

"look at you. all grown up and scholarly." you tugged a strand behind my ear. "very handsome, benny."

i said "thanks" to the refrigerator. my ears were burning.

bobby came in. you kissed him. i excused myself.

i sat on my bed and pressed my hand to my scalp where your fingers had been and breathed in through my nose for a count of four, and out through my mouth for a count of four for ten minutes because my heart rate would not come down.

handsome. you said handsome. you touched my hair and called me handsome.

next three lifetimes. i'm carrying this.

january 6, 1990

i had a dream about you. i'm going to write it down because i have to put it somewhere that doesn't judge me.

you were in my dorm room. sitting on my bed. and you said "benny, come here" and i went. you put your hands on my face and kissed me and i could feel it. the pressure of your mouth. the warmth of your breath. your lips parting and your tongue finding mine and the small sound you made when i pulled you closer.

and then you were under me. your legs wrapped around my waist. i was inside you. and you were saying my name. not bobby's, mine, brendan. over and over while your nails dragged down my back and your head fell back and i could feel you around me, tight and warm and perfect. every time you said brendan i went deeper and you arched into me.

i woke up so hard it hurt. sheets ruined.

i lay in the dark and put my hand around myself and thought about you beneath me and came in under a minute with a pained groan, and felt like the worst person alive.

you trust me completely. and i'm lying in the dark getting off to dreams about being inside you.

i'm sick

i'm not sick. i'm in love. but from here they feel the same.

march 2, 1990

your voice on the phone last night, sleepy and warm: "night, benny. love you."

casual. friendly. the way you say it to terrence. the way you say it to your friends.

i hung up and pressed the phone against my chest and stared at the ceiling.

love you. you say it so easily. like the words are light. like they cost nothing.

for me they cost everything.

march 15, 1990

you visited for my birthday. flew out alone. bobby couldn't make it.

you were standing outside my dorm with a bakery box and a toothy grin. "happy birthday, benny! it's lopsided because TSA manhandled it."

three days. you slept in my roommate's bed. wore my harvard sweater because you forgot to pack layers, too used to cali heat. it was too big on you. sleeves past your fingertips. collar slipping off one shoulder. bare legs. padding around my room.

i very nearly put my fist through a wall.

we stayed up until 4 am. lying in the dark on separate beds. your voice floating across the room. you told me things you haven't told bobby. things about your childhood. your fears. you talk to me differently than you talk to him. with bobby you're warm but with me you're open. like i'm the one place you can put things down.

"you're my favourite person." half asleep. murmured. "don't tell bobby."

i won't tell bobby. i won't tell anyone. i will take that sentence and compress it into a diamond and keep it in my chest forever.

on the last morning you hugged me at the airport. held on. your face in my neck and your hands gripping the back of my shirt and i breathed you in. vanilla and that warm unnamed you scent. stored it. another moment that belongs to me in all the wrong ways.

"come home soon."

i'm always coming home. you're there. there is no other reason needed.

april 27, 1990

you called me crying last night. bobby again. another fight. another door closed in your face.

and i sat on my bed and held the phone and listened and said the right things and the kind things and the things a good friend says. but underneath every word was this screaming, roaring, monstrous want to say: LEAVE HIM. LEAVE HIM AND LOVE ME. I WOULD NEVER DO THIS TO YOU. I WOULD NEVER FORGET YOUR BIRTHDAY. I WOULD NEVER MAKE YOU CRY. I WOULD SAY I LOVE YOU EVERY SINGLE MORNING BEFORE YOU FINISHED OPENING YOUR EYES.

i said: "he's an idiot but he'll come around. give him time."

i'm such a coward

i am such a fucking coward

may 15, 1990

two entries in quick succession because i need to put this somewhere before it eats through my chest.

i came home for the weekend. you were at the house. bobby was at work. you were in the kitchen making lunch and you turned and saw me and made that sound (that little happy gasp) and threw yourself at me.

and i held you. my face in your hair. your body against mine. and you pulled back and looked at me with those eyes, and put your hand on my cheek, and said worriedly, "you look tired, benny. are they working you too hard?"

and your hand was on my face. your palm on my cheek. your thumb brushing the skin under my eye. and you were close enough to kiss. and i could feel my pulse in my throat and my fingertips and the backs of my knees and i was drowning in the scent of you, vanilla and warmth and clean laundry. my hands were on your waist and yours was on my face and the kitchen was empty and quiet, and i could have leaned forward two inches and—

bobby's truck pulled into the driveway.

you dropped your hand. smiled. went to greet him.

two inches. i was two inches from ruining everything and saving everything, and i don't know which it would have been and i'll never know. i stood in the empty kitchen and pressed my hand to the cheek you touched and breathed through my teeth until my heart rate dropped.

june 3, 1990

i love my brother. i love bobby since we were born seven minutes apart and he came out screaming and i came out quiet. i love him for his warmth. his courage. the way he tried to shield me from dad even when we were too small to name what was happening. how he always stood up for me, always tried to understand me even when he never could.

but when it comes to you.

when it comes to you i hate him too.

i hate that he has what i want. i hate that he doesn't always value it. i hate that he gets to hold your hand and kiss you and fall asleep with your head on his chest but doesn't understand what a miracle that is because he's never stood on the other side of it watching.

i hate myself for hating him. he didn't steal you. he asked and you said yes and i never opened my mouth. the silence was my choice. every single day i choose it and every day it gets heavier.

i love him. i hate him. i love you. i can't have you.

four facts. a box with no door.

july 14, 1990

i've gotten better at being a person.

three years of harvard and i can navigate a party without wanting to leave within five minutes. i can make friends. i can read a room without running the translation in real time. the machinery is smoother now. the performance takes less effort.

but it's still a performance. everywhere except with you.

you're the only place where i don't have to translate. the only person whose presence makes the noise in my head go quiet instead of louder. everyone else, even the people i've grown to love at harvard, requires a version of me. you just require me. the real one. the strange one. the one who needs silence and can't handle being touched by anyone except you ,and notices too many details, and feels everything at the wrong volume.

you've never once asked me to be different. you've never once made me feel like the way i'm wired is a problem to be solved. you just sit with me in the quiet and let me be strange and call me benny. hold my hand and everything inside me goes still.

the eye of the storm. every time. the one calm place in a world that's always too loud.

july 28, 1990

if i could have one day.

one day where you wake up next to me. where you reach for me in the dark. where you say brendan in the voice i've only heard in dreams. where i can put my hands on your face and say it out loud, in daylight, without shame, without the weight of brotherhood crushing the words before they leave my mouth.

one day where the "i miss you benny" becomes "i love you brendan." where the hugs don't end because you're pulling away to go back to him. where i can press my mouth to the skin on your throat i've imagined ten thousand times. where your hands are in my hair because you want them there.

just one day.

and then i'd give you back, and carry it forever.

i am twenty years old. pre-med at harvard. full ride. a life that looks like everything a person could want.

and every night i fall asleep missing a girl who sleeps in my brother's bed. and every morning the missing is the same size. the same depth. the same fixed point that everything else orbits.

i don't know how to stop.

i don't think i'm supposed to.

[undated, late 1990]

i love you

i love you

i'm in love with you

i've been in love with you since september 3rd, 1985, homeroom, twelve minutes late, window seat

i love you and i can't say it and the not saying is killing me, it is actually, physically, killing me

i love you more than he does. i love you better. i would never make you cry, i would never forget, i would never close a door in your face

no. that's not fair. he loves you. he does. he just doesn't know how. and i do know how and i can't and that's

i love you

i love you and i'm so tired of not saying it

i love you and i've never kissed anyone who wasn't wrong

i love you and you call me benny and it's the closest i'll ever get to hearing my name in your mouth the way i need to hear it

i love you and i tried to stop and i can't stop

i love you and i don't want anyone else and i've tried and i will never want anyone else

i love you and you held my hand under the table and i almost told you then

i love you and you slept on my shoulder and i memorised your breathing

i love you and you made me a mixtape and wrote "and by home i mean me" and i have listened to track 12 four hundred times

i love you and i am so afraid you'll find this notebook

i love you and i am so afraid you won't

i love you and bobby is my brother and i love him and i hate him and i love you and i can't

i love you i love you i love you i love you

i should write it down. the real way. once. clearly. not crossed out.

for every time i didn't say it but should have. for every hug where i held on too long and you didn't notice. for every time you fell asleep on my shoulder and i sat perfectly still and memorised the pattern of your breathing. for the mixtape and the silver stars and the way you said and by home i mean me.

for every phone call at 1 am when your voice was the only warm thing in my whole life. for every time you ran at me in an airport. for every time you touched my hair and called me handsome, and i said thanks to the refrigerator because looking at you while you said it would have ended me. for the parking lot where you held my hand. for the two inches in the kitchen. for the dream where you said my name. for the popsicle on your wrist. for your head on my shoulder at every bonfire. for your palm on my cheek and your thumb under my eye and the truck pulling into the driveway.

for the hair tie on my nightstand. for the book with the silver stars i still keep pressed flat inside a textbook. for the three thousand miles that were supposed to fix me and only proved that i am unfixable.

i love you.

i love you. i love you. i love you. i love you. i love you. i love you. i love you.

i love you and i should have said it in the kitchen when your hand was on my face. i love you and i should have said it in my dorm room when you were wearing my sweater and the collar was slipping off your shoulder. i love you and i should have said it at graduation when you screamed in my ear. i love you and i should have said it at the bonfire when you asked if i was happy.

i love you and i have never once been brave enough to say it and writing it down is the closest i will ever come and even now, even in a notebook nobody will read, the words feel too large for the page.

they feel too large for my hands. they feel too large for my chest which has been holding them for five years and is so full the seams are splitting and i am so tired. i am so tired of carrying this. i am so tired of being good and quiet and safe while the love sits behind my teeth and rots there because i will not let it out.

i love you. there. for every time i didn't.

i lo

[the entry ends here. the last two letters trail off the line, the pen stroke dragging sideways across the page before stopping. the ink on this page and the one before it is warped and buckled. the paper has dried stiff and rippled in places, the way paper does when it gets wet and dries again. the distortion is heaviest around the final lines, where the ink has bled and feathered outward, blurring the words at their edges. it is not water damage.]

endless and empty, humming with a silence so total it became a sound of its own. millennia of it. millennia of drifting through the walls without a fixed shape, without a name, without a single living thing that looked at you and didn’t scream.

you existed and the existing was vast and cold and purposeless. you’d forgotten, long before he fell through the wall, that you were even lonely. the loneliness had become so old it stopped registering as pain. it was just the of being.

the way it had always been. the way it would always be.

and then he was there. bleeding from a scrape on his elbow, his eyes huge and terrified, his hair falling in his face. he looked at you—the flicker of monster underneath, for one flickering second before you pulled the human shape together fully—and he didn’t scream.

he flinched, pressed himself against the wall and his breathing went thin and sharp, but he didn’t scream. when you held your hands up and spoke to him in the voice you’d built from his favourite sounds, he listened.

and now he runs from you through your own hallways with his heart hammering and his cheeks flushed and his cock hardening in his jeans because you’re playing.

someone is playing with you. someone wants to be chased by you. someone laughs when you catch them and wraps their arms around your neck and says got me with a crooked grin. after millennia of nothing. after eons of cold silence and hollow corridors and the crushing weight of being one of the few conscious things in an infinite empty house.

you're so happy it rewires your frequencies every time.

you push off the wall. you don’t run. you stroll. hands in your pockets, hips loose, humming a song that doesn’t exist. your footsteps are silent. the hallway bends for you, doors shifting, exits rearranging.

you aren’t chasing him through the maze. you are the maze. and the maze is in a very good mood.

brendan rounds a corner and presses his back to the wall, chest heaving, hands braced on his knees. listening.

silence. which is worse. because it means you’ve stopped making noise on purpose, and that means you could be anywhere. right behind him, right above him, in the walls themselves, pressed flat and grinning in that space between the plaster and the carpet.

a bead of sweat trails down his temple. his sandy hair sticks to his forehead, damp at the nape where it brushes his neck.

“brendan.” your voice comes from everywhere, cooing. from the ceiling tiles, the carpet fibres, the humming lights. sweet and fond and warm with amusement. “you’re breathing so loud, baby. I can taste your heartbeat from here.”

his cock twitches in his jeans. his body decided long ago that this is foreplay while his brain still tries to file it under survival. his hands are shaking, his skin flushed, every nerve ending lit and screaming, and at least half of that scream is want.

he bolts.

you laugh behind him. the sound rolls through the corridors like warm water, bright and pleased, delighted, and it chases him faster than you do.

and the thing is, he loves this about you. loves the wildness of it, the gleeful predatory joy that lights you up from the inside when the chase is on. you’re ancient and terrifying and when you hunt him you giggle.

you play. you make it fun because it is fun for you. because he’s your favourite toy in the whole vast dark, and the knowledge that he can bring you this much delight by simply running through your hallways on his clumsy human legs makes him feel like the most important thing that has ever existed.

he makes it two more turns. you let him. you could end this whenever you want but the chase is the whole point because he’s so pretty when he runs. long limbs and clumsy feet and that wild-eyed look over his shoulder, sandy hair falling in his face. your boy. your gangly, terrified, painfully human boy, running through your corridors like a deer through a forest.

and you are the forest, and you adore him.

you step out of the wall in front of him.

brendan skids, nearly falls, catches himself on the opposite wall and stares at you with blown pupils and a heaving chest. you’re leaning against the wallpaper with your arms crossed, head tilted, that fond predatory amusement written across every feature.

“four minutes,” you say. “that’s a new record. I’m proud of you.”

“you—” he’s gasping, a beautiful flush spreading across tendons of his throat, “you moved the hallways.”

you gasp. “I would never.”

“you moved the hallways.”

your grin widens, from innocent to unrepentant.

you close the distance between you. take your time with it. one step, then another, and brendan presses flat against the wall behind him, his throat working on a swallow.

you stop inches away. close enough that your breath ghosts across his jaw, cool and sweet. close enough to watch the fear melt into anticipation. his chest still heaving, his face flushed, his lips parted. but he smiles. breathless and bright and so happy, this crooked grin splitting across his face.

“caught me,” he says softly.

something in your chest cracks open because he’s glad. he ran from you and he’s glad you caught him and the gladness is all over his face and you can’t help yourself, you lunge.

arms around his neck, your mouth finding his, and you’re both laughing into the kiss. your teeth bump his lip. his nose knocks yours. his hands grab your waist and haul you flush against him, and you can feel the laughter shaking through his ribs, warm and giddy and human. you’re giggling against his mouth, and he’s grinning too wide to kiss properly but neither of you cares.

“four whole minutes,” you manage between kisses, biting his lower lip, releasing it. “I’m impressed.”

“you moved—” he’s laughing, his hands sliding up your back, pulling you closer. “you moved the hallways, that doesn’t count.”

“it absolutely counts. my hallways, my rules.”

and then the laughing softens into something else. brendan's hands slow on your back. your mouth finds the hinge of his jaw.

you nuzzle in, your nose dragging along his pulse, and he tips his head back with a sigh. you press your whole body flush against his and purr, loud and happy, vibrating through his chest and ribs. your face buries in the crook of his shoulder and you inhale deep.

sweat, adrenaline, and warm, alive, unmistakably brendan skin.

“my boy,” you murmur into his neck, your lips curving against his pulse. you press a kiss there, open-mouthed and lingering. “my pretty, pretty boy.”

his hands are in your hair now. both of them, tangling in the strands, cradling your skull. his mouth presses to your temple, your forehead, the bridge of your nose. anywhere he can reach. and the hunger in it makes your purr stutter because he’s starving too.

he’s just as touch-starved as you are. years of being the twin people didn’t hug, the boy who flinched from casual contact, the one who stood at the edge of the group with his arms crossed, and his shoulders hunched while bobby got the back-slaps and the arm-punches. the easy physical affection that flows between people who belong to each other.

and now he has you. and you don’t flinch when he touches you. you don’t pull away. you press closer. you melt into his hands and purr against his throat and he can touch you as much as he wants, as long as he wants, and you’ll never be overwhelmed by it.

you’ll never be put off. you’ll match him, grip for grip, grabbing and holding and pressing close with the same frantic, grateful hunger because you were alone for millennia, and he was alone for twenty years.

the math isn’t equal but the ache is.

so you indulge. both of you. his mouth on your jaw, your teeth on his throat. his hands mapping your spine while yours slide under his shirt and press flat against the hot skin of his stomach.

you nip his earlobe and brendan gasps, grabs your hips and pulls you tighter against him. you feel his cock pressing against your thigh through the denim, already half hard, and you grin against his neck.

your hand slides down his chest, over his waistband. you palm him through the jeans and hum with approval. pop the button, slide your hand into his boxers. your fingers wrap around him—warm and thick, twitching in your grip—and he groans, his head dropping back against the wall.

“oh,” you tease, nuzzling under his jaw, your hand stroking slow. “someone’s been enjoying the chase.”

“shut up—” but he’s gasping, his hips pushing into your fist, and his mouth is searching for yours at the same time.

he kisses you messy and desperate, moaning against your lips while your hand works him. his tongue in your mouth, his hands crushing your waist and his hips rock into you, and he can’t decide what he wants more. to kiss you or to fuck your fist. so he tries to do both, and the greed of it, the clumsy urgent need, sends a spike of arousal through you so potent your form flickers.

“already so hard for me,” you murmur into his mouth, your thumb tracing the head, spreading the wet beading there. “just from my voice? from hearing me laugh behind you?”

“from—” he’s panting between kisses. “from you. from everything—your laugh, the way you—fuck.” your wrist twists and his sentence dies in a groan.

and the joy that spikes through you is so sharp it borders on painful.

he got hard from your happiness. this boy who could barely look you in the eye six months ago is grinding into your hand because your delight turns him on. the warmth of that blooms through your chest, and your purr deepens. you reward him with a stroke that makes his knees buckle.

you pump him slow, your grip firm, your mouth latching onto the side of his throat. you suck; hard, marking, pressing a bruise into that pretty pale skin. tasting the salt of his sweat and the frantic thrum of his pulse under your tongue.

you love marking him. love pressing your claim into the smooth canvas of his neck, his collarbone, the soft skin behind his ear. love seeing the purple bloom against the pale and knowing it’s yours. your teeth. your mouth. your boy, wearing your marks.

and brendan moans. the sound is so pretty it makes your grip tighten. this gorgeous, broken groan that vibrates through his throat against your lips.

you suck harder in response. stroke faster. and he’s gasping, one hand gripping your shoulder, the other fisting your hair. his hips rocking into your hand while his mouth presses frantic kisses to your temple, your cheekbone, the corner of your eye. touching you everywhere he can reach because he can’t stop.

because the touching is the whole point, the touching is the feast after the famine, and neither of you can get enough.

and then his teeth find your neck, and you still.

because he bites you. not the hesitant graze of a boy who’s afraid to leave a mark.

he bites down on the tendon between your neck and shoulder with a sharpness that makes you gasp. his teeth pressing into your cool skin, his mouth hot and wet and greedy, and the edge is there, that thing in him you’ve been coaxing out. that hunger he keeps locked behind the shyness.

it peeks through when he marks you. when he sucks a bruise into your collarbone and pulls back to look at it with dark, satisfied eyes. you heal faster than a human. the marks fade within hours. he makes new ones every time, pressing his claim right over the ghost of the last one, and the possessiveness of it makes you dizzy.

quiet, relentless brendan who won’t raise his voice in a room full of people but will bite the ancient thing he loves until his teeth leave dents.

“please.” he breathes against the wet mark on your throat. “please, I want—”

“I know what you want.” you bite down on the tendon in his neck, mirroring his mark. he shudders beneath you. “nest. now. I need to claim my prize.”

you take his hand, lace your fingers through his. press a kiss to his knuckles that’s giddy and soft and he squeezes back, and you pull him through corridors that part for you like curtains.

the nest is everything he needs because you built it that way. soft. warm. piled in blankets and pillows in colours you chose because they make his eyes look bluer. low amber light from a source that doesn’t exist, casting everything in gold.

you can’t stop touching each other. even crossing the room, even the ten steps between the door and the blankets.

his hand on your lower back, your fingers tracing his wrist, his mouth dropping a kiss to your shoulder as you walk ahead of him. two starved creatures feeding each other without thinking. giddy and soft and then you spin and push him down into the nest. the softness sharpens into heat, just like that. the flip of the dime.

predator and prey and lovers all tangled in the same breath.

you strip his shirt over his head. drag his jeans and boxers down his legs and toss them into the dark. and he reaches for you while you do it, his hands on your arms, your waist, your hips, unable to stop, unwilling to lose contact even for the seconds it takes to get him bare. and then he's there, long and lean, his cock flushed and hard against his stomach, your marks blooming purple on his pale throat.

you shed your own clothes. let the human shape loosen as you do, your edges blurring with anticipation, your skin rippling with eagerness. you straddle his hips and his hands find your thighs and grip. you lower yourself onto him and—

you shift. tighten. reshape yourself around him just a fraction past comfortable, your inner walls squeezing his girth until he’s groaning, a low guttural sound that borders on pain.

brendan's head presses back into the pillows, his jaw pulsing. his hands crush your thighs as you ease him in, inch by agonising inch, so tight around his natural thickness that every fraction of depth pulls another sound from him.

“fuck.” hissed through his teeth, his hands flying to your thighs and gripping. “you’re so—I can barely—”

“take your time.” you rock your hips, a tiny grinding motion, seating him deeper. your hands find his on your thighs. lace your fingers through his. “I’ve got you.”

brendan bottoms out with a groan that shakes through his whole body. his chest heaves, his stomach muscles twitch and flex. his hands won't settle. they’re everywhere, sliding from your thighs to your hips to your waist to your breasts and back, greedy, grabbing handfuls of you like he can’t believe you’re real and solid and in his lap.

so you start to move.

you ride him deep and greedy, bouncing and grinding, your hips rolling in that fluid motion that no human body could replicate.

the pleasure hits you and you go wanton with it, vocal, enthusiastic, not holding a single sound back. moaning open-mouthed and loud. your head falling back. your nails raking down his chest. it feels so good it’s almost violent. your eyes bleed to black. your tongue slides past your lips, longer than it should be, and your skin ripples with each wave of sensation.

the human shape thinning, your edges flickering, glimpses of the vast thing underneath bleeding through.

“yes—” you gasp, grinding down hard on a stroke that hits deep. “yes, right there, my brendan, right there—”

and your enthusiasm undoes him as much as the tightness does. the fact that you’re loud, that you’re grabbing at him, that you’re bouncing on his cock with your head thrown back and moaning like he’s ruining you, it feeds something starving in his chest.

his hands slide from your waist to your hips, gripping, kneading, squeezing the plush fullness of your form. his fingers digging into the soft flesh of your thighs. his thumbs tracing the crease where thigh meets torso. then his palms sweep up over your stomach, your ribs, cupping your breasts, squeezing, his thumbs dragging across your nipples, and you keen, grinding down harder.

“you feel incredible,” he breathes, his eyes tracking every ripple and shift of your form above him. his hands slide back to your hips, gripping tight, pulling you down onto him on every stroke. “you’re—god—you’re so beautiful—”

and the praise hits you like warmth of his body does when he hugs you. your purr surges, loud and happy, and you lean down and grab his face, kissing him because you have to. you can’t not. and he’s so happy to kiss you.

brendan's hands cradle the back of your skull, his mouth warm and eager, smiling against yours. he wraps his arms around you and pulls you flat against his chest and kisses you deep and messy while his hips roll up into you from below.

“do you like this?” you rasp against his mouth. your voice layered, harmonics bleeding through. “is it—is it ok that I’m—” you gesture at yourself, at the flickering edges, the too-black eyes, the tongue that keeps slipping past human length. “is this ok?”

his hands tighten on your hips. he stops your grinding with a firm grip, holding you still. and you freeze, the breath you don't need catching, because the fear is old and bone-deep and instant. too much, I showed too much, he’s going to be disgusted—

brendan meets your black eyes. holds them. one hand comes up to cup your jaw. his thumb traces your cheekbone with a tenderness that makes your chest ache.

“I like you,” he says quietly and so sincerely it cracks you open.

the happiness that floods through you is blinding. ancient. it touches places in you that haven’t been warm since before the walls existed.

your purr erupts, loud and jagged, and you kiss him—hard, grateful, fierce—your hands gripping his jaw, his shoulders, pulling at his hair. your hips start moving again, harder this time, meaner, grinding down with a ferocity that makes his jaw go slack.

you sit up straight and ride, bouncing on him fast and deep, your hands braced on his chest. claiming him. squeezing tighter. taking more. every roll of your hips saying mine mine mine mine.

“oh god—” he’s gasping for air underneath you, his hands gripping your hips, not stopping you, just holding on. “oh fuck—”

his hands slide to your ass and grab and knead while you bounce on him, pulling you down harder onto every thrust, his fingers sinking into the plush give of your flesh. his touch is greedy now, his shyness burning off in the heat between you.

brendon sits up suddenly, wrapping his arms around your waist, pulling you flush against his chest. your legs wrap around him. his mouth finds your collarbone and he bites down, and you gasp, your hips grinding and he groans against the mark he just left on your skin.

you ride him harder. faster. the wet sounds between you filling the nest, your moans layering over his. your form rippling with each wet thrust. your hands fist in his sandy hair, tugging, and he moans into your throat every time you pull. you’re close. so close. and he’s looking at you with those blue eyes blown dark and that expression, stunned and adoring, and you’re going to break apart on him—

he flips you.

your back hits the blankets, your breath punching out and brendan is above you, sandy hair hanging in his face, chest heaving. the edge is in his eyes. that hard, certain line underneath the nerves. his hands find yours. pin them beside your head. lace his fingers through yours. and the gesture is both dominant and tender, holding you down and holding your hands.

he leans down. presses his mouth to your ear.

“my wonderful hunter.” his voice is shaking. his jaw nudging against yours. “let me reward you.”

he starts on his knees between your thighs, spreading you open with his hands. his thumbs tracing your sensitive folds, his palms pressing your thighs wide, his eyes fixed between your legs with an intensity that makes your stomach clench.

“you’re so wet,” he breathes. one hand leaving your thigh to trace through the slick of you. his fingers exploring, slow, unapologetic. “you’re—look at you.”

“brendan, please.” your hips lift, seeking, and your enthusiasm is naked and urgent and you don’t care. “please, I need—”

“I know.” soft. his thumb circles your clit and you jolt. “I know what you need.”

he pushes in. slow and deep from this angle, his hips pressing flush, and you cry out because the depth is different this way. fuller. he pins your thigh back with one hand, opening you wider, and sinks the last inch. the sound you make is loud and inhuman, carrying down corridors.

brendan leans over you, bracing on one arm. his free hand slides up your side, your ribs, cupping your breast, his thumb dragging across your nipple while he fucks you in deep, rolling strokes.

his mouth finds yours and you kiss him sloppy and desperate while his hips grind. your legs wrap around his waist, and he groans into your mouth.

“so eager,” he murmurs against your lips fondly, his hips grinding a slow circle that makes you arch off the blankets. “so greedy for me. I love it. I love—” he cuts himself off with a ragged exhale as you clench around him greedily, sucking him in deeper. “I love how much you want this.”

he touches you like he’s still amazed he’s allowed. like every handful of your flesh is a gift he keeps being given. and you touch him back, grabbing, pulling, your nails raking down his spine, your hands gripping his ass and urging him deeper.

and then brendan's hands slide to your hips. he pulls out and you whine. high and keening, soaked in displeasure, and he says “turn over” in a voice that makes you purr.

you turn over. press your face into the blankets. arch your back for him.

on his knees behind you, brendan takes a moment.

his hands spread over the curves of your hips, kneading the flesh. his palms sliding up to your waist, then back down, gripping your ass with both hands, squeezing and spreading. he traces the dip of your lower back with his thumb. his breath is ragged, awed. his hands won’t stop moving because the sight of you—bent over, waiting, offering yourself to him—has short-circuited every shy instinct he has.

“you’re so beautiful,” he repeats, but rougher now, his hands gliding over your hips. “you’re the most—there are no words for you. none.”

you make a satisfied, happy sound, angling yourself for him. brendan pushes back in and his head drops forward with a hiss.

“jesus.” barely a whisper. the angle is tighter, deeper, and the groan it pulls from him is guttural and shaking.

he draws back and watches himself disappear into you, his hands tightening on your hips as he moans. he stays there for a beat, gripping you, buried to the hilt, his chest heaving.

then he takes your wrists. both of them. draws them behind your back and pins them there in one hand. his other hand grips your hip. and he starts to move.

you’re loud. louder than you’ve ever been.

your face pressed into the blankets, your back arched deep and your wrists locked behind you. every thrust drives a sound from you that isn’t human, that rattles the walls. and you’re enthusiastic about it, rocking back against him, meeting every stroke, moaning his name shamelessly.

“more,” you gasp into the blankets. “brendan, more, harder—please—”

“yeah?” soft. his thumb traces a circle on your pinned wrist. tender even now. “you want more?”

“yes, god, yes, please—”

he gives you more. his hips driving hard while he holds your wrists pinned. he’s hissing for air on every stroke, his breath catching between his teeth, his thighs trembling. sweat trails down his spine, but his grip doesn’t waver, his voice low and warm even as his body shakes.

“there you go. that’s it. take it. you can take more, can’t you? my strong, beautiful girl.”

your orgasm hits you like a rupture.

your walls clench so hard around him that brendan gasps. you feel your release drip down your thighs, wet and slick, pooling on the blankets beneath you. he follows a breath later, burying deep with a groan that breaks in his throat, his cock pulsing as he pumps you full.

his release joins yours, dripping where your bodies meet.

but you don’t stop. your hips push back against him, grinding, seeking, and the pheromone releases before you can think about it. a subtle chemical shift in your skin, sweet and heady, flooding the air between you.

you feel it hit him. feel his softening cock twitch and thicken again inside you. feel brendan's grip on your wrists tighten.

“what—” he pants, hissing through his teeth. “I just—how am I—”

“again,” you whisper, pushing back against him. desperate. needy. “please. again. I need more of you.”

and he goes again, no questions, only a brief kiss against your shoulder.

he's harder this time, his hand releases your wrists and slides up your body. he drags you upright, your back against his chest, his hands cupping your breasts firmly.

brendan holds you there, flush against him, one arm banded across your chest. his mouth hot against your ear while he thrusts up into you from behind.

“greedy,” he whispers, but his hands are greedy too, kneading your breasts, his fingers rolling your nipples, his mouth sucking a bruise into the side of your neck. “so greedy. can’t get enough of me, can you?” his hips snap up and you cry out. his hands squeeze. “but my powerful, beautiful hunter deserves exactly this. every drop. everything I have. you deserve all of it.”

and you’re sobbing with the pleasure of it, your form flickering wildly, your hands reaching back to grip his hair, his jaw, the back of his neck. pulling him closer even though there’s no closer.

his hands everywhere on you, grabbing, holding, his mouth on your neck and your shoulder, biting marks into your skin that will fade by morning and he’ll make again tomorrow.

the second orgasm hits you both in the same breath. his hips slamming deep and locking there, his groan vibrating through your spine, his cock pulsing as he fills you again while your walls milk him in tight, urgent sucks. the warmth of it, the fullness, his hot seed spilling out around him and dripping down your thighs makes you tip your head back and moan so loud and pleased few lights somewhere in the level blow out.

and when the wave recedes, you wrap around him immediately. all of you. at once.

your human shape loosens to let more of yourself through. extra limbs, cool skin, coiling tendrils, all folding around his shoulders, his waist, his legs. enveloping him in the full embrace of what you are. your purr fills the room, loud and satisfied, vibrating through every point of contact.

brendan laughs. this quiet, fond, disbelieving chuckle that shakes through his chest and into yours.

his arms come up and wrap around whatever part of you is closest and he holds on, surrounded, claimed, thoroughly spent, and laughing because the ancient terror of the backrooms is purring like a housecat in his lap and nuzzling into his neck.

you end up on your sides. tangled in blankets. his forehead against yours. your legs woven together. your hand rests flat over his heart, feeling it slow in increments.

brendan's arm tightens around your waist and he pulls you closer even though there’s no closer left. his nose nuzzles against yours. his eyes are closed, lashes damp, a faint, crooked smile playing at his mouth.

you wrap yourself around him. the smaller you, the human-shaped you, and tuck your face into the crook of his neck. your purr starts again, lower now, pressing into his collarbone.

his hand cradles the back of your head.

“where did that come from?” you murmur into his skin.

a long pause, his fingers tracing lazy circles on your scalp.

“I don’t know.” honest. his lips move against your hair as he speaks. “you were on top of me and you were so beautiful and I just... I wanted to hold the strongest thing I’ve ever known and not break.” his voice drops to barely a murmur. “I wanted to be enough for you.”

you pull back, take his face in both hands, pressing your forehead to his.

“you always were and always will be.”

he exhales, and that slow, rare, crooked smile appears. “yeah”

you kiss his forehead. his nose. the corner of his mouth. his jaw. the hollow beneath his ear. and brendan melts. his whole body going boneless, his arms pulling you flush against his chest, his face buried in your hair.

neither of you pulls apart.

“my hunter,” he murmurs, half asleep, fond, his thumb tracing your spine.

“my pretty boy,” you whisper back, pressing the words into his pulse.